Design with nature: spatial solution and city-effect

The relationship between the city and its inhabitants has changed very quickly over the years. In recent times, cities have reflected a social, environmental and economic crisis. The conditions of inadequacy, especially for suburbs, are really evident jet, exposing citizens to ever greater risks. Urban areas, even if re-configured through urban regeneration projects, have not been able to guarantee adequate levels of well-being and city-effect. In fact, the growing urbanisation of cities has involved the loss of green spaces, with consequent negative impacts on biodiversity, social relations and climate. In this contest, planning strategies inspired by nature like Nature Based Solutions (NBS), Green&Blu Infrastructures and more, may be possible answers to stimulate urban regeneration and sustainability in urban systems, improved livability also. A selection of European projects from the Horizon 2020 programme (such as Nature4cities, UNaLab, UrbanGreenUp) are going to be used to demonstrate how the use of NBS strategies at the urban scale can counteract the effects of urban mismanagement, improve the quality of living and provide a sustainable environment. Through the selection of projects, the urban scale and public space will be investigated, from an adaptive perspective, with a focus on environmental and socio-economic performance, namely triggering the city-effect. The thesis is that urban areas re-designed according to NBS methodologies and embedded in a network of interconnected centralities, networks of places, can initiate transformations not only of degraded urban elements, but of the whole city, so that the entire city system becomes adaptive and resilient. A sustainable future needs sustainable cities.